By: Jefferson Weaver
I have no idea how long he was lost, but it was long enough that he was grateful for a
decent meal.
I’d finally managed to find a few hours to head for the woods, and despite any
number of ridiculous delays, I still had a good two hours of daylight to get some
work done. I’d even come up with an alternative plan since it turned out I’d
grabbed the wrong keys as I fled the house, and was locked out of the hunting
grounds far better than anyone with criminal intent.
Then I saw Will.
At first, I thought he was an early-moving coyote hunting the ditchbank, and my
blood began pumping a little faster. The Winchester was just an arm’s reach away; I
figured to drive on past, park the truck on a handy logging road, take a good rest
across the hood, and score some fur.
But coyotes don’t have red-roan hides and gloriously long ears. Nor do they look at
you with huge, hurting eyes half-filled with hope.
I came very close to cursing myself as I stopped the truck and bailed out. He was
sitting half-hidden in the broomstraw, which swooshed behind him as he wagged
his tail, daring to think I might be a good person. I grabbed a scoop of dog food and
began calling him.
Will ducked, half-crawled through the ditch, and crept across the paved road on his
belly. I was surprised that he was a redbone hound, not a Walker or black-and- tan
or tick, so I figured he was a coonhunter, not an abandoned deer dog. Perhaps there
would be a tattoo or a collar.
Naturally there wasn’t. There was a single bloated glutton of a tick on one ear, and a
few healed bites scattered across his nose, but those ears that looked like enormous
wings were largely unscarred and soft, begging to be stroked. His teeth, too, told me
he was a young dog. He looked more like a skeleton covered in brown-burgundy
cloth than a living, breathing and very hungry hound.
Will devoured a good double-handful of food, and as I talked sweet to him I mentally
kicked myself. He started to jump in the back of the truck, like any good dog should,
but I scooped him up and put him in the back seat with another handful of food and
some crackers. A quick call to the landowner confirmed what I thought – they
weren’t missing a redbone male.
“Jefferson,” Carl said, “I guarantee you know what happened. Somebody dumped
him out.”
It’s a story I get tired of writing, and I write it nearly every year. Some of these folks
who tax my Christian principles decide a dog is too old or too slow or not pretty
enough. They either never pick up an imperfect hound after the last hunt, or worse,
intentionally dump or her out somewhere. Almost every year that I’ve trapped, I’ve
caught them every January, hungry, skinny, sick and grateful. A couple of the best
dogs we have ever called our own came home because they were to curious about a
coyote trap, or too hungry to be careful.
We always strive to rehome ours. It’s not like people don’t want to adopt hounds. A
few of ours, like Gimpy Jack, have disappeared on one final hunt after coming to
spend their twilight years with us. Some have been adopted to be spoiled house
dogs, while others ended up going home with hunters and houndsmen who were
vetted more carefully than a potential new first lady of the British royal family.
Other hounds ain’t so lucky as to find a sucker like me; you see them in the animal
shelters or the dog-adoption pages on social media. It’s not natural for any dog to
have to be trapped behind chainlink fence and concrete, under artificial light,
without sunshine and grass and dirt, but at least they have a chance there. That’s
better than the ones who drag themselves crying to a final resting place in a Carolina
bay, under a forgotten building, or on the side of the highway, unloved and
unappreciated by anyone except the scavengers who see them as another meal.
I reckon it’s no surprise I end up writing a column about tossed-out hounds every
year. The first column I ever had published in a newspaper was when I was eight or
nine; the kids on our school bus saw a shepherd dog tossed from a car beside a busy
highway. The dog chased after the speeding car, but cars always win in those cases.
A week or so later, we all saw him again; once again, a car had won.
Let’s get something straight: I have no beef with doghunting or doghunters in
general. I know the difference between malnourished and fighting trim. I know
many a hound has found his or her way safely home from some incredible distances,
even if the dog rode to the hunt in a truck but had to walk home.
I know people have to eat before animals, at least in some households. I know dogs
are expensive to maintain – trust me, I know this intimately.
I also know that no animal that has been bred to be loyal and trusting of a human
deserves to be thrown out because his or her human isn’t, Lord forgive me, worthy
of air.
Cats can and will go feral within days, and do what they must to take care of
themselves (and the problems that go with freeranging cats are a column for
another day). Dogs, however, were the first critter we know of that volunteered to
befriend humans. Few and far between are the dogs that are truly irredeemable, and
those are usually due to sorry excuses for humans.
Are Rhonda and I something special because we try to save some of the critters
others leave to starve? Of course not. We just try to be good stewards of all God’s
critters, whether said animal is a companion, a farm critter, or something to be
eaten and worn. We know we can’t save them all, and we don’t try.
But once in a while, there’s a Will, and sometimes you just can’t drive on down the
road without looking in the mirror and knowing you left a broken heart beside a
country road.
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